ERB`S CONCERTO FOR BRASS PROVIDES CSO WITH ROBUST WORLD PREMIERE

John von Rhein, Music criticCHICAGO TRIBUNE

Because of a $500,000 gift from the Edward F. Schmidt family of Evanston to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra endowment fund, the orchestra will present an annual series of symphonic commissions by some of the most respected figures in today`s music. It is planned that at least every other year the commissioned work will involve one of the CSO`s principal players as soloist. This represents a major commitment to today`s composers by the city`s leading musical institution and deserves the highest praise. Some significant scores could enrich the repertory. In fact, one already has. The new work is Donald Erb`s Concerto for Brass and Orchestra (1986), and it had its world premiere Thursday night in Orchestra Hall with Leonard Slatkin conducting.

We have the Schmidt family`s particular fondness for brass instruments to thank for the fact that the first commission in this series brought the orchestra`s entire brass section to the fore. That section, 12 players strong in this performance, has long been celebrated for its combustible power and virtuosity, qualities that must have proved a heady lure indeed for a composer of Erb`s bold sonic imagination.

He uses the choir collectively--erecting massive blocks of brass sonority --but he also peppers the texture with piquant solos for the horn, tuba and trumpet. The music is cast in three connected sections of roughly 20 minutes` duration. The orchestral canvas is vast, incorporating a huge percussion battery and three keyboards, including synthesizer. But Erb deploys this huge apparatus with subtlety as well as weight, convincing you of the necessity of his eruptive sounds--sounds that in lesser hands might have turned merely gimmicky.

Like many of Erb`s scores, the concerto has a convulsive energy based as much on patterns of violent rhythmic flux as audacious color combinations

This music deserves to make the rounds of the American symphonic circuit, and will do so, I am certain, because it is good, exhilarating and accessible. Slatkin has championed many of Erb`s works and he conducted with conviction and understanding. But the real stars of the performance were the wondrous CSO brass choir and the composer himself, who happily joined in the ovation.

The works Slatkin chose to frame the Erb premiere likewise proved of unusual interest--a Haydn symphony that the orchestra had never played before and a 20th Century English symphony unfamiliar to the majority of subscribers. The Symphony No. 68 in B-flat proved a valuable discovery from a too-little-known period of Haydn`s career, full of sly humor and first-rate invention. Slatkin is a reliable Haydn interpreter, and he brought out the vivacious high spirits of the music with abundant gusto.

Vaughan Williams` Symphony No. 5 was something else again, a beautifully played account that had everything going for it save the eloquence of feeling which for some admirers of the composer makes this the greatest of the nine symphonies. Nearly everything about this performance seemed geared toward surface values; one came away admiring the efficiency of the medium rather than absorbing the sense of the message being conveyed.

The closest Slatkin came to getting the Chicago Symphony to speak in an authentic English accent was the Romanza, where he managed to coax a remarkable combination of intensity and radiance from his players. But just about everything else was slightly off--dynamics too weighted toward the loud end, tempos just a bit too hurried. It was wonderful to hear the Fifth again in Orchestra Hall after 12 years, but for this listener modified rapture was the disappointed response.